TNAG-0317-FCO40-353-Policy-of-housing-and-resettlement-in-Hong-Kong-problem-of-s-1971 — Page 63

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HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL

in-advance scheme. Also, of course, the co-ordinating Committee which the previous working party recommended was formed in a totally different way from that which we contemplated it and we did not, even as a Council, have a say in this co-ordinating Body. With these excep- tions I take full responsibility for having been a party to the recom- mendations which were ultimately laid down in the White Paper of 1964, but I say that the time has come in 1971 to review the priorities.

I personally am all in favour of granting resettlement to everyone who is in housing need through natural disaster. They should be given priority No. 1, even if the commitments for the clearance of squatters from Crown Land has to be reduced. I appreciate that the Government wants to clear squatters from usable Crown Land, not only for sale but also very frequently for community purposes such as the erection of public buildings or even just for more open spaces, but nevertheless it should not be done in priority to any victims of natural disasters. Then again in 1971, provisions should be made for total resettlement of roof top squatters gradually, say, over the next five years. At present so many social welfare cases give an address as an un-numbered hut on some roof-top. The same goes for street huts which should also be totally cleared away and the occupants offered resettled. These are merely some preliminary observations on my proposed priorities with the stress being on emergency houses, an emergency housing, as opposed to the waiting list housing of the Housing Authority and the Low-Cost Housing.

I am also pleased to see that Mrs. ELLIOTT's Motion suggests that the new Working Party also examine the management of resettlement estates. In 1952 when the name Resettlement was coined for Hong Kong, it came from Malaya, it was as a division of the old sanitary department later called the Urban Services Department. Then the Government on the recommendations of the Urban Council went in for multi-storey resettlement in 1954 and set up a Resettlement Department which department now handles numerous estates that house in all well over one million people. I take my hat off to the Resettlement Depart- ment for managing to house ever expanding numbers with no real professional help at least until very very recently. But again in 1971 there is a need for a re-look to see what professional help is essential to make resettlement a form of public housing which Hong Kong people can be proud of and to do the same thing effectively about the present almost slum conditions that now prevail in the older estates. In my opinion there should be one department of housing with adequate numbers of trained staff in housing management divided into three divisions, one the better type of housing authority flats, two, the ordinary low-cost housing and three, resettlement which must be the same type of accommodation as low-cost housing but essentially for emergency housing needs. For ten years now we have been urging greater co-

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